The Double-edged Sword Effects Of Ambidextrous Leadership On Employees’ Innovative Behavior:the Mediating Role Of Challenge-hindrance Pressure

In a globalized and increasingly competitive economic marketplace,innovation is an essential element for companies to strengthen their strengths and competitiveness.To be able to cope with the various changes and evolutions,it is through the innovation of employees that companies have the opportunity to break out of the traditional framework.Therefore,the question of how companies can continue to stimulate their employees’ creativity and promote the practice of their creative ideas has become an issue that many managers and academics are examining.To stimulate innovative ideas,managers’ leadership styles play an important role in influencing employees.In response to the complexity of innovative behavior,scholars have begun to investigate the impact of ambidextrous leadership,which employs both open and closed behaviors,on employee behavior.Early research suggested that ambidextrous leadership was effective in enhancing productivity and employee innovation,but in recent years,the ’dark side’ of ambidextrous leadership has emerged.Ambidextrous leadership is the integration of contradictory perceptions,which can lead to cognitive tensions and role conflicts,which can harm employees’ innovation.The open and closed leadership stimulate enthusiasm and lead to challenging pressures,but can also lead to negative emotions and hindering pressures.The association between challenging and hindering stress and innovation is strong,so this study suggests that these two types of stress may be the key mediating mechanism.By analyzing the Big Five personality,it was found that employees with high levels of commitment were more likely to enhance their professionalism through self-emotional regulation than those with low levels of commitment,so that commitment may have some moderating effect.Accordingly,this study uses the moderating variable of consistency to analyze in depth the double-edged sword effect of ambidextrous leadership on employees’ innovative behavior.Firstly,the study reviewed and analyzed domestic and international literature on ambidextrous leadership,challenge-hindrance stress,consistency,and employee innovation;secondly,the study constructed a model and formulated a research hypothesis based on mature data from domestic and abroad and administered a research questionnaire and three rounds of questionnaires were distributed,and 218 valid questionnaires were collected;finally,exploratory factor analysis,validation factor analysis,correlation analysis,regression analysis,and bootstrapping analysis were conducted using statistical analysis software such as SPSS and AMOS.Finally,exploratory factor analysis,validation factor analysis,correlation analysis,regression analysis,and bootstrapping analysis were conducted to validate the model through statistical analysis software such as SPSS and AMOS.The findings show that: firstly,ambidextrous leadership has a significant effect on employees’ innovative behavior;secondly,challenge-hindrance pressure mediates the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and employees’ innovative behavior,and ambidextrous leadership has a double-edged effect on employees’ innovation through challenge pressure and hindrance pressure: ambidextrous leadership increases innovation by increasing employees’ challenge pressure on the one hand,and harms innovation by increasing employees’ hindrance pressure on the other;thirdly,consistency mitigates the negative effects of ambidextrous leadership,the higher the level of employee consistency,the weaker the negative effect between ambidextrous leadership and employee hindering pressure;fourthly,employee consistency moderates the mediating effect of hindering pressure between ambidextrous leadership and employee innovation,the higher the level of consistency,the weaker the mediating effect.Based on the results of the study,management recommendations are made from the perspective of organizational management as well as organizational managers.The study also provides new ideas on how to improve the level of management and what measures to take to better exploit the role of ambidextrous leadership in employee innovation.